


Five Times Ray Vecchio Tried to Fix Things With Cuddling (And One Time He Fell For His Own Trick)

by Scribe



Category: due South
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Does what it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Ray Vecchio Tried to Fix Things With Cuddling (And One Time He Fell For His Own Trick)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seascribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seascribe/gifts).



> Happy birthday Seascribe! Here is some Ray Vecchio cuddling fic.
> 
> Note: everything I know about bullet wounds I made up while on a plane with no internet access. Please suspend your disbelief.

**1\. Frannie**

It wasn't a school night, so Ray was allowed to stay up and read a little after he'd gotten ready for bed. It wasn't supposed to be for more than half an hour, but he could tell from the volume of the yelling downstairs that no one was going to come check on him, so he decided to finish the book. He'd gotten a stack of Hardy Boys mysteries for Christmas a couple weeks back. They were great, absorbing enough that he could almost tune out his parents' fight.

When he was done he reluctantly emerged from his cocoon of blankets to go to the bathroom. The wood floor was freezing underfoot, but it would only be worse if he had to get up in the middle of the night. He flicked off his light before he opened the door, just in case, although the person most likely to get him in trouble was Maria, and she was sleeping over at a friend's house. He picked his way to the bathroom in the dark anyway. 

On the way back his eyes had adjusted enough to see Frannie huddled in her nightgown by the top of the stairs.

"What are you doing?" he whispered. "Your bedtime was ages ago."

She mumbled something inaudible.

"What?"

"Can't find Rabbit," she repeated, with a worried glance downstairs. Ray sighed.

"All right, come on," he said. He wouldn't have wanted to interrupt the argument for a missing stuffed animal, either. 

He snapped on the light in the girls' room, making them both squint. Frannie's blankets were in a tangle on the floor. He shook them out one by one while she watched him anxiously, but nothing fell out. Next he tried flopping across the bed to peer down the gap next to the wall, and then lying on the floor to scout underneath. He was about to give up when he finally spotted Rabbit wedged between the mattress and the headboard. Frannie hugged the stuffed animal gratefully when he handed it to her, but didn't move to get back into bed.

"Can you sleep now?" he asked. She shook her head mutely. Ray rolled his eyes- there wasn't anyone here to chastise him for it, after all- and folded his arms. "Well, what is it?"

"Too loud," said Frannie, mostly to Rabbit. 

It was true, he realized. The girls' room was in the front of the house, right over the living room, and the voices filtered up so well that you could hear each individual word. He wondered if Maria has some way she usually dealt with it.

"You wanna sleep in with me tonight?" he asked Frannie. "My room's quieter."

She nodded, so he turned out the lights and led the way back. There was still a little warmth lingering in his bed, at least. He pulled the covers up tight around them to keep it in. Frannie curled up next to him, one hand holding onto Rabbit and the other clutching a fistful of his pajama top, her forehead pressed against his chest. After a minute he tried stroking her hair a little, the way Ma used to do when he was young enough to need tucking in at night. He was pretty sure she fell asleep- her grip on his shirt loosened, at least- but he kept it up for a little while just in case.

In the morning Ma got mad about Frannie sleeping in his room and he got mad back and told her she could have stopped yelling long enough to put Frannie to bed herself. He got in trouble for talking back, of course, but that didn't bother him much. He got in trouble a lot. What stuck with him was the memory of Frannie's warm, sleepy body tucked up against his, and the idea that sometimes just holding someone could be enough to make things better, at least for a little while.

 

**2\. Irene**

Ray loved Irene's bed. He'd had a lot of good experiences there, of course, a lot of first times, but those were only secondary reasons. Mostly he loved it because when she tugged the curtains shut around them it created a secret haven, private and safe. It was where he'd discovered the amazing intimacy of just being allowed to touch someone else, not even for sex, just little easy touches, lazy or comforting or absent-minded, like their bodies belonged to each other. In Irene's bed it didn't matter if one or the other of them was bruised sometimes. They kept their hands gentle and didn't talk about it, not a purposeful avoidance, but just because it wasn't important, not there.

"You should go," Irene whispered. They always whispered, stifled their laughter and swallowed down other sounds. Ray knew it was because they couldn't risk discovery, but even so it made everything they did feel almost sacred.

"Not yet," he whispered back."

"It's starting to get light, someone will see you."

"Yon light is not daylight, I know it. It is some meteor that the sun exhales," he said. They'd read Romeo and Juliet that November in junior English and he'd fallen in love with it, memorized whole passages that he liked to tease her with. That wasn't why he'd learned them, though; the whole play just felt true, like one of those perfect song lyrics that caught your heart, the way almost no school book ever did. 

She laughed and leaned over to kiss him quiet, hair falling around his face.

"You really should leave. It would be stupid to get caught now." Now that their time together was up, she meant. She was leaving for college in the morning. In a few hours, really; that was why Ray had spent the night, which he hardly ever did.

"I won't get caught," he told her.

"You always say that."

"And I never do." He'd had to slip out of the curtains that faced away from the door and roll under the bed a couple of times, but nothing had ever come of it.

Irene sat up, hugging her knees.

"I'll write to you."

"Yeah?"

"I will. We won't even have to watch what we say, no one in college will care what I'm writing and my parents won't ever know. I'll send them without a return address."

"Like that won't look suspicious."

"Or I'll make up a fake one, whatever. We'll figure it out."

"I'll write back," he promised, already thinking about the different mailboxes he could use, ones that were out of his usual way and wouldn't risk the postman gossiping.

"You'd better."

It really was getting light; he could see the expression on her face better than he was accustomed to, and the dull gray pre-dawn light was picking up hints of color. He shifted aside one of the curtains so he could see the window. It was even brighter in the rest of the room. The sun hadn't quite crossed the horizon yet, but it was going to at any second.

"Ray..." said Irene. He let the curtain fall back, giving them the illusion of darkness again.

"Five more minutes," he said. "C'mere, rest your head on my shoulder." That made her smile, like it always did, and she came and lay back down, tangling their legs together and tucking her head under his chin. He was always amazed at how easily they fit together. In the rest of his life it always felt like he had too many knees and elbows, too many sharp angles to be anything other than awkward. Everyone was always telling him he'd grow into his height, but he'd been taller than his Pop for a year now, for all the good it did him, and still he only ever felt graceful for a moment now and then on the basketball court and here, in Irene's bed.

He slipped a hand under her pajama top so he could touch the smooth skin of her back, felt the warmth of her there against him for what might be the last time. She nestled closer, putting her own hand flat on his chest over his heart.

"I don't want to leave you," she said. Ray swallowed hard around a sudden tightness in his throat. He desperately didn't want to be left, didn't know how he was possibly going ot make it through another year of high school without Irene there giving him a reason to get through the day. They might have gotten caught at any moment- still could, and probably would if he stayed much longer- but somehow the haven of Irene's bed was still the only place he felt safe sometimes, the only place he could relax and just let everything be simple and good. 

There was no point in saying any of that, though. It wasn't Irene's fault that she was a year older. She deserved to get out of here as soon as she could- she wanted to as much as Ray did, that was certain- and besides, what was he going to do, beg her not to go to college? So he just said,

"It'll be okay. You'll be home for vacations and things, and it's not like you're going so far. Maybe I could visit sometime."

"You should," she said, though she had to know what an impractical suggestion it was. "Whenever you want."

"All right."

The sun was up now, he could tell because everything was washed in pale color: Irene's hair dark brown against his red shirt, the little yellow flower pattern on her pajamas, the pink curtains closing them in. 

"I'll miss your curtains," he told her.

"I'll leave them up, just for you."

"Promise?"

"Of course. When I'm home for Christmas break you can come and see."

"It's a date," he said, though it was only August and Christmas seemed impossibly far away. Four months was ample time for Irene to fall in love with someone at college, to decide she didn't want some pathetic high school senior climbing in her window in the dead of night.

"You really should go," she said, though she made no move to let him up.

"I know. In a minute," he said, and held her close just a little longer, closing his eyes against the sun.

 

**3\. Ange**

Before the lawyers had gotten involved, and the families, and the money, back when divorce was just a word hanging heavy in the air over the kitchen table, it had been strangely easy. Not good, and not comfortable, but easy. Inevitable.

He and Ange had been introduced by a mutual friend just over two years before. Re-introduced, really; they'd been in school together, though only vaguely aware of each other, Ange a freshman to his junior and dating someone in her own grade while Ray's every thought was taken up by Irene. In their twenties, though, a two-year age difference no longer mattered, and they hit it off immediately. It was a perfect romance. Between their families and friends and colleagues three-quarters of the neighborhood attended the wedding, and that was perfect too.

It was also a mistake. They'd rushed into things too quickly, and when the romance began to fade it became clear that they weren't going to develop into love, and maybe worse than that they weren't going to develop into friends, either. It wasn't that they fought- that came later- but by the time they'd been married eight months they'd run out of things to say to each other. Ray was just glad it happened to both of them at the same time.

Ange was the one who first said the word divorce, but that almost didn't matter. They'd both known that was where they were heading. Ray agreed that they'd start looking into it next week- though he didn't really know what _it_ was, other than a vague idea that it involved lawyers and paperwork- because they had a busy couple of days coming up, overtime shifts for both of them and then the christening for Maria's new baby on the weekend.

Even knowing it was coming, saying it out loud changed something. It made everything seem final. Ray went to bed with a feeling of helpless, guilty sadness, like the time he'd tried to rescue a bird with a broken wing when he was a kid, gave it a box lined with blankets and brought it worms and water and it died anyway. Ange turned out the light and got into the other side of the bed. Ray rested a hand tentatively on her hip, unsure what was allowed now, but she laced her fingers with his and pulled gently, so he wrapped an arm around her waist and tucked his face against her hair. She smelled familiar, like any other night.

He was going to miss having someone to hold as he fell asleep. It was that thought, that he'd miss just the fact of sleeping with someone rather than missing _her_ , that convinced him they were doing the right thing.

 

**4\. Fraser**

Fraser talked earnest, rational circles around the hospital staff to get them both out a few days early, but Ray didn't object. It was that or go absolutely stir-crazy. His shoulder still hurt, sure, but it would hurt whether he was at home or in the hospital, and if he had to spend one more day staring at the same walls and having the same careful conversations with Fraser he was going to...well, not punch anyone. He was maybe going to cry, and the at was reason enough to get the hell out of there.

He skipped his evening pain meds so he could drive, and boy did getting behind the wheel of the Riv again feel good. Fraser didn't even bother offering to walk, which was a sure sign of how badly off he still was. Ray took him to pick up Diefenbaker instead. Then he drove over to Fraser's apartment and made himself get out of the car, even though the ride had been worse on his shoulder than he'd thought and he really just wanted to go home and take his painkillers.

"You don't have to come up, Ray, I'm fine," protested Fraser.

"No, you aren't," said Ray wearily. He'd seen Fraser clenching his jaw tight on the rougher roads, and anyway if he wasn't there Fraser would probably throw out his prescription and try to sleep on the floor or something.

"I assure you, I am," said Fraser.

"You gonna take your meds?"

"Well, I do have some doubts about the effectiveness-"

"Yeah, come on," said Ray, and put his energy into climbing the stairs. There was probably something wrong with him, that after everything Fraser had done, after Ray had jumped in front of a damn bullet for him, he still couldn't help taking care of the guy. It felt like more of a chore than usual tonight, though.

Upstairs, Ray watched Fraser take his pills while Dief investigated every corner of the room. Making sure she was gone, maybe, or maybe just reacquainting himself with his home after being gone so long. Ray had to help Fraser get his sweatshirt off. He wanted to bitch about how maybe he could have worn something with buttons, but it was hard to break silences between them these days, like everything solid and easy had suddenly turned fragile and might shatter altogether if either of them put a foot wrong. He kept quiet and helped with the shirt. It took forever, and he got impatient and tugged too hard trying to get it over Fraser's head, which sent a stabbing pain through his shoulder so bad that he had to sit down on the edge of the bed and just try to breathe instead of screaming for a while. It hurt all down his arm and side and back, too, which wasn't remotely fair. 

By the time the pain subsided enough for him to register his surroundings again, Fraser was standing over him with a glass of water and Ray's prescription bottle.

"I can't, I have to drive home," Ray told him, though the idea of getting back in the car made him wince. Fraser raised his eyebrows.

"Are you sure that's wise? You're already quite late with your usual dose."

"Well, I’m not about to endanger everyone else on the road. I can read a warning label, you know. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery. I can take it when I get home."

"On the contrary, Ray, the untreated pain might be as much or more of a distraction than any effects of the medicine."

"Yeah, well, it's one or the other. What do you suggest I do?"

"You could stay the night," offered Fraser. Ray looked up sharply, but Fraser's face set in careful politeness. "You might feel more up to driving after you get some rest."

"Maybe so. Hand that over, will you?" What he really wanted was some privacy, but he wasn't going to get that at home either, and to be honest there was no way he'd make the drive. He had to have Fraser open the pill bottle for him in the end.

It was still early, but both of them were clearly headed toward sleep. Ray helped check Fraser's bandages and Fraser fed Dief and they had the expected argument about whether Ray was taking the bed.

"Fraser, you have a bullet wound that you already opened up a second time, you cannot sleep on the floor."

"I have plenty of padding, Ray, I'll be perfectly comfortable."

"Bullshit," said Ray, who was tired and in pain and beyond out of patience. "No one except the wolf is sleeping on the floor. We can share just fine. The bed's not that small, it can fit two people."

"Yes, I know," said Fraser quietly. 

Silence reigned for a long minute. Fraser looked at the bed and Ray looked at Fraser, and then out the window when he couldn't stand it anymore. Eventually Dief jumped up onto the bed and whuffed at them.

"Quite right," said Fraser with a sigh. "Ray, would you like help with the dressing on your shoulder?"

"Maybe in the morning." He was supposed to do it every night, but he just couldn't face dealing with the sling and his shirt after driving and fighting with Fraser's clothes and wrenching his shoulder earlier. Every little movement was still making it throb. Besides, the medication was starting to kick in, and he was floaty and slow and tired.

Fraser didn't push it, for once. They got settled with Ray propped halfway to sitting, which was the way he'd slept best in the hospital, and Fraser stretched out next to him with Dief curled meekly at his feet. Neither of them had the heart to make him sleep on the floor. 

Ray dozed, the awareness of his discomfort drifting in and out, but Fraser couldn't seem to find a position that worked for him. After a few minutes of his restless shifting Ray gave up and opened his eyes.

"You need me to move?"

"Oh, no, you're fine where you are. I'm afraid I may have gotten used to the pillows at the hospital, that's all. I never used to need one to be comfortable. I'm not sure what's wrong with me."

"A bullet in your spine is what's wrong with you," said Ray. He knew very well that he was leaning on everything even vaguely pillow-like that Fraser owned, but he also didn't want to give any of it up. Lying flat pulled his shoulder unpleasantly.

"Can you scoot down a little?" he asked instead. "I have an idea."

They ended up with Fraser curled on his side, head on Ray's thigh and feet under a protesting Diefenbaker's stomach. He looked vulnerable like that, fragile, white gauze and medical tape standing out against the skin of his back. He hadn't bothered struggling into another shirt. After a minute he sighed and brought a hand up to rest on Ray's leg, warm and heavy and sure.

"I'm sorry, Ray," he whispered. Hearing it didn't help as much as Ray had thought it would.

"Yeah, I know," he said. He carded his fingers through Fraser's hair and then wrapped his good arm carefully around Fraser's bare shoulders, getting comfortable. If he positioned it just right it blocked his view of the bandage, and maybe he could pretend- for just a minute, until he fell asleep- that nothing had changed at all. 

 

**5\. Stella**

After Vegas, Ray dreamed sometimes. Some of the dreams were just memories and some of them were things that hadn't happened but could have, meetings with his deputies and deals and beatings and getting executed in the desert when someone found out he wasn't Langoustini after all. He usually woke himself up shouting. He didn't know what he said- he only ever bolted awake to the echoes of his voice, the jolt of adrenaline from an unexpected sound- but he wasn't sure he wanted to know, anyway. 

Luckily, Stella was a heavy sleeper. Sometimes she'd stir a little, maybe hum or roll over, but she never woke. Ray was thankful. He loved falling asleep with her, loved waking up with her even more, and if she'd been a lighter sleeper she almost certainly would have demanded a separate bed, and for good reason.

Hell, he'd take a separate bed from himself if he could, he thought one night, trying to listen past his own pounding heart to see if he'd woken her as well. After a minute he rolled over cautiously. Stella was facing away from him, but as far as he could tell she hadn't stirred. He let out a silent breath of relief. He'd been dreaming about getting found out again, this time a variation where they used his own gun on him in Langoustini's living room. It was hard to get it out of his head. 

He sighed, inching closer until he could wrap himself around Stella's sleeping form, concentrating on everything about her that was here and now and nothing like Las Vegas: she was wearing an oversized, threadbare t-shirt as pajamas, her hair still a little damp from when they'd dared each other into the ocean before bed, smelling like saltwater and sand. He could feel the steady rise and fall of her chest. He closed his eyes and tried to match his breathing to hers, to the slow rhythm of the waves outside that was nothing like the desert, but it still took him a long time to fall asleep.

 

**6\. Kowalski**

As it turned out, Stella was probably such a heavy sleeper because she'd spent years putting up with a husband who twitched and started at the slightest noise. There was no way Ray wouldn't wake him. He preempted the problem by not staying the night, at least for the first couple of months, but Kowalski got tetchier and tetchier about it until he explained.

"Is that it?" said Kowalski, perched on the edge of the bed in his boxers. It was too dark for Ray to really make out his expression, but there was something odd in his tone. "I thought...well, it doesn't matter what I thought. Get back here, I don't care if you wake me up."

He was fine that night, but the next night he dreamed again, this time about ordering a hit on one of his own goons who'd started selling information to a higher bidder. He woke up to his ears ringing, gasping with the breath he'd taken to keep yelling. The bed shifted as Kowalski sat up.

"Jesus, Vecchio, keep it down," he said, rolling over to sling a leg over Ray's hips and an arm across his ribs. "Some of us are trying to sleep here." He wriggled a little and then settled, spooned up close with one hand rubbing gently over Ray's chest.

"Sorry," managed Ray. Kowalski yawned against the back of his neck.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Go back to sleep." He followed his own advice quickly, limbs going lax. Ray reached up as carefully as he could for the hand over his heart, lacing their fingers together. Kowalski stirred, of course.

"Sleep now," he mumbled, squeezing Ray's hand. Ray squeezed back, and obeyed.


End file.
